<http://www.iht.com/> International Herald Tribune
Kosovo's future sparks flurry of diplomacy By Judy Dempsey Wednesday, April 18, 2007 BERLIN: Serbia is the focus of intense diplomatic attention this week as senior Russian and Chinese officials visit Belgrade, the U.S. Congress debates the UN independence plan for Kosovo and Europe's top diplomats travel to Moscow. The flurry of diplomatic activity signals the beginning of the countdown to independence for Kosovo, according to analysts, despite Serbia's strong opposition to ceding the province that has been governed as a UN protectorate since 1999. "Maybe this activity is the beginning of the first of the last round of such maneuverings," said Ivan Vejvoda, director of the Belgrade office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. "The U.S. and Britain want closure." The European Union, which will replace the United Nations in Kosovo once the province's status has been agreed on by the Security Council, is also seeking a quick resolution. But the two stumbling blocks are Serbia's staunch opposition to the recommendations made by the UN special envoy to Kosovo, Martti Ahtisaari, and Russia. Serbia's leaders have rejected the Ahtisaari plan, which envisages an interim period of international supervision and would grant Kosovo its own army, flag, anthem and constitution before achieving full statehood. Instead, they have proposed a status that would grant Kosovo "more than autonomy but less than independence" without specifying how that would work in practice. So far, Serbia has received support from Russia. Moscow, however, has not yet spelled out any concrete options or indicated whether it intended to use Kosovo as a bargaining chip on other negotiations. Those include the standoff between the United Nations and Iran over Tehran's nuclear program and the terms of a new trade and political accord between Moscow and the EU. "We simply do not know what Russia's real intentions are," said a senior EU diplomat involved in the Kosovo negotiations. Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, was scheduled to arrive in Belgrade on Wednesday for two days of talks with President Boris Tadic, Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic. "Lavrov is coming to discuss Kosovo," a Russian diplomat in Belgrade said. Asked if the foreign minister was bringing any new ideas that might persuade Serbia to accept the UN plan, the diplomat responded that Moscow wanted to hear what the Serbian leadership had to say. Until recently, Russia had suggested that if Kosovo achieved independence, other breakaway regions - in Georgia and Moldova, for example - could make similar claims. Moscow, however, has refrained from making such comparisons over the past few weeks. Instead, Russia has requested more time for negotiations before the Security Council debates the issue. As a permanent member of the council, Russia has veto power. U.S. and EU diplomats have resisted further delays, largely because they feared that the fragile unity among the three main Albanian parties in Kosovo - in which the groups pledged not to resort to violence to press their claim for independence - would unravel. "There is every reason to believe that that solution put forward by Russia, put forward by the Serb government itself, would lead to more violence, rather than less," said R. Nicholas Burns, the U.S. under secretary of state for political affairs, during a speech Monday at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. Burns also attended a special session of the U.S. House of Representatives on Kosovo. The Senate will also debate a UN draft resolution. Serbia hopes to win support from China, which also holds veto power in the Security Council. Hui Liangyu, the Chinese deputy prime minister, arrived in Belgrade on Tuesday. The EU, which is already making arrangements to take over from the UN mission in Kosovo, will attend talks in Moscow on Friday along with other members of the so-called Contact Group on the Balkans. The group includes Germany, the United States, Russia, France, Britain and Italy. It is scheduled to meet again next week in Berlin. Germany, the current president of the EU and the Group of 8 leading industrial nations, said it still hoped to break the impasse between Kosovo and Serbia before the G-8 summit meeting in June. According to German officials, Chancellor Angela Merkel does not want the issue to dominate a meeting in which she has made climate change a top priority. In a sign of just how brittle the atmosphere is between Belgrade and some of the Contact Group members, the German ambassador to Belgrade, Andreas Zobel, publicly apologized for comments he made last week at a forum in the Serb capital. In his remarks, Zobel questioned whether Kosovo had always been a part of Serbia and warned that if the solution for Kosovo fell short of independence, it could lead to a flare-up in other areas of Serbia. Serbia claims that Kosovo was the cradle of its culture and identity before being incorporated into the Ottoman Empire. The Serbian government said in a statement that Zobel had interfered in Serbia's internal affairs. "In many ways, he questioned the territorial integrity of Serbia and the inviolability of its recognize international borders," it said. _____ <http://www.iht.com/> International Herald TribuneCopyright © 2007 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
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